196 TROUT FISHING 



to have been full hours before. You will some- 

 times be out when for the whole day the minnow 

 is the best killing bait, but those days are rare; 

 they are mostly met with when the rivers have a 

 fair body of water in them and are rich in colour. 

 More often you find that for some time the trout 

 take the minnow greedily, and gradually they 

 get sickly over it, when you have to change, and 

 sometimes there is scarce apart of the day in which 

 the minnow will not be beaten by some other bait. 

 In spinning the minnow, the particular points to 

 acquire are, first to be certain of your pitch, so 

 as to be able to put your minnow at any time 

 exactly where you wish ; and secondly to make 

 him spin as he goes into the water; he must 

 begin this the instant his shoulders are wet, and 

 having begun, he must continue to spin, straight, 

 and rapidly. To effect the first, practice alone 

 can avail ; as to the latter, as a general rule one 

 should strive to spin directly, obliquely, or in a 

 curve down stream, and mainly because of the 

 advantages of the position you yourself occupy as 

 regards concealment; and avoid spinning up 

 stream for the opposite reason, as also that it is 

 too unnatural a movement and is apt to scare the 

 trout. By spinning directly across the stream, 

 you often get a fine fish ; you just pitch out the 

 minnow with precision and pull straight towards 

 you, and perhaps before the minnow has spun 

 one foot you have your trout. I like this cast, 

 and kill usually a large number of fish by it. In 

 spinning down stream, when your minnow has 



